


Memento mori — Memoria vitae (A Remembrance of Death -- A Reminder of Life)

by writernotwaiting



Series: Walking and Falling [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Loki needs more than just a hug, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, assumes a pre-existing relationship, could be canon compliant if you squint, lots of feelings, surprisingly snark-free sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:16:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9535439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writernotwaiting/pseuds/writernotwaiting
Summary: Loki needs to forget some things. Other things he needs to remember. Natasha can help with that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Easter egg tribute included to Act of God (an rp Loki story posted over on fanfic.net). You get a gold star if you find it.  
> Many and heartfelt thanks to pedeka (Tumblr) and icybluepenguin for the editing and encouragement. Yunz guys are the best.  
> *And* thanks to awolfbeneath (Tumblr) for help with the Latin. *smooch*

Loki stood in the shadows of the doorway looking up at the bleached moon. A cat darted through the shadows and down an alleyway. The streetlight on the corner buzzed an off-key chord, until a terse flick of his wrist silenced it, plunging the street into further gloom. But the silence was just as irritating as the noise had been, and he gripped the door frame to keep himself from fidgeting. She was here somewhere, he knew. He would wait. He had promised.

And wasn’t that ironic.

But he would wait, because he needed. The tension had built over the past weeks. Little things. Reminders. Each one a weight added to his shoulders. Carried in his pockets. Tied to his boots. Until every muscle stretched tight, and he felt disastrously out of tune, sharp. Only two things could release this sort of tension — well three, really, but that was his other promise — “No killing, Thor. I promise.” And he would keep that promise, too. For now.

But he needed.

Against all external logic, he trusted her. Trusted her to give him what he needed, and take what she wanted without leaving any lingering debts.

He felt the wood of the doorframe slowly collapse like a dry sponge under his fingertips as his grip tightened. He. just. needed.

“There you are.”

Her voice fell on his ears like soft water into a deep pool, and his breath came a little easier with her presence as he turned to face her. He moved back against the door frame as she stepped closer, though she wasn’t quite close enough to touch.

He felt the heat of her, though. His hands practically twitched with his desire to reach out, but he held back to prolong the anticipation. As the corner of his mouth curled up slightly in greeting, his eyes moved over every detail, taking note of each difference in her appearance from their last encounter — each hair that rested at a different angle, the slight smudge where the make up blended into her cheek with a varied translucency, the lipstain a millimeter short of her lipline, the collar of her jacket askew by a quarter inch. He memorized each detail. Filed them away. For no reason. For later. There would be many laters. He stocked up.

Natasha reached up and brushed his jawline with her thumb, resting her hand just under his ear. “You are uncharacteristically free of snark, this evening.”

He shrugged.

Her eyes darted over his armor. “And you’re wearing your leathers. Something is not right.”

He shrugged again, but offered no details.

“Something happened.”

His expression soured slightly, though she hadn’t asked a question, as such; it was a request to confirm a suspicion. Against all possibility, the observation ratcheted his tension higher.

An elegant eyebrow arched up toward her hairline. Of course she had noticed his agitation. They were alike in that. Is that why he was here? Maybe. But he still felt raw. Felt the instinct to hide.

As the silence stretched out, she brought her other hand up to bracket his face, so she could search his expression.

He deflected, barely resisting the instinct to pull away, “Where is your other monster?”

It took a second before it clicked, and she drew her mouth in to a frown. “Don’t start that. It’s irrelevant. This — whatever it is — has nothing to do with Banner. ”

She pulled his face down to meet hers and once more stopped just short of touching, instead she inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she took him into her lungs. He needed, but so did she. And so she would savor him with all of her senses. When she closed the final distance between them she brushed her lips across his with only the lightest of touches, breathing in once more, feeling his own breath twine together with hers. Her tongue flicked out for a brief taste.

She kept herself just right there as she next spoke, “What we want from each other has nothing to do with belonging or ownership. I am not part his, part yours. I’m not anyone’s. And that’s what you need. Something that’s given freely. You come back to me because what I offer is a gift, not an obligation. Everything I give to you I could take right back. Just as nothing you give me is a payment for a debt. It just is.”

She breathed him in once more before she spoke again, “What do you need, Loki?”

Loki closed his eyes and skimmed his fingers over the curve of her hips before lightly wrapping around her waist, thumbs resting just under her ribs. His own tongue traced his lip where hers had burned it and withdrawn. The words that came out were as much breath as they were sound, “I need to forget, Natasha. I need you to make me forget.”

She pulled him in to a kiss that sucked the breath from his lungs, then pulled back with a sad smile. “Something slow, then, this time. We should find a bed. I don’t exchange presents in a doorway like a thief.”

Loki crushed her to his chest and carried her inside.

Despite his strength it was not an elegant trip to the bedroom. He first stopped in the kitchen for some chocolate, then got distracted at the base of the stairs as she moaned around the fingers that had offered a dark square to her lips. And again halfway up the stairs as her mouth offered the sweet taste of it back to his.

As they passed the threshold, her thighs loosened their grip from around his waist. Once her toes touched the floor once again, she first slid her hands into his jacket to let it fall to the floor. He shifted to start unbuckling his armor, but she stopped him. “No. This is my gift.” And she took his wrist, pulling his hand to her lips, placing a soft kiss on each finger and on the palm of his hand before working the buckles on the vambrace, putting it aside, caressing the soft skin on the underside of his wrist, kissing it and the tender flesh up the inside of his forearm. Once she had drawn from him a stuttering breath, she moved to do the same with his other arm, carefully removing his armored shell and breathing across the flesh she exposed.

She followed suit with each remaining piece of his protection, stripping him down, tracing each contour of skin as it revealed itself, first with feathery touches, then warm, wet kisses.

Loki watched every movement as if she were something holy, and he the sacrifice. His face mirrored her expressions, lips parted slightly in anticipation, letting out a hiss of pleasure as her fingers found his nipples and scraped his chest with her nails.

When at last only his trousers remained, she guided him around until his legs bumped against the bed, pushing him into a sitting position, sliding her hands over his torso once more.

“That’s better,” she purred, her lips quirking upward now that she finally had a height advantage, and insinuated herself between his long legs. “Close your eyes,” she instructed, and she guided his hands back to her waist, as she hummed with pleasure.

“I like those hands.” She leaned in close so she spoke low in his ear, her breath barely caressing his skin, raising goosebumps. “Long nimble fingers, like a pianist.” She hummed slightly as his fingers roamed over her ribs, skittering over each contour, tracing the lean muscles beneath the skintight leather of her suit.

She raised her own hands to his hair, threading them through the disordered locks, untangling the knots, slowly massaging his scalp, working her way from front to back, shifting so one knee rested on the mattress between his thighs, brushing up against his crotch. He exhaled heavily with the added contact, closing his eyes and leaning forward to rest his mouth at the crook of her neck inside her collar, humming with pleasure as she worked the tension from his neck and shoulders. His own hands continued memorizing her back, her ribs, her rear, and her thighs before moving to brush at the heat between.

He inhaled deeply as he nuzzled further in to her neck and began mouthing at the warm skin, felt her pulse quicken with the added contact, and his fingers pulled down the zipper at her neck as he sought more — more warmth, more skin, more contact.

Natasha pushed him back to lie on the mattress so she could tug off his boots and trousers. Again, she worked slowly. Pausing to explore each new inch of skin as it revealed itself, as his eyes followed every movement of her fingers, every micro-expression on her face. Her lips and hands worked their way up his calves, and between his lean, sinewy thighs leaving wet trails of heat as she went, his breath coming faster as she moved higher, until he let out a keening groan as she brushed her cheeks across the velvety skin of his erection.

“More. Natasha, I need more of you, all over.”

She smiled her approval, running the flat of her tongue from the base of his cock to the tip, before she stood to unzip her suit the rest of the way, peel herself out of the leather, and glide her way up over his body to cover it with her own.

He responded with a full-body shiver and a quiet moan that seemed to issue from the deepest part of him, rumbling from his core and through his chest and throat, so that Natasha felt as much as heard it, as he finally brought his arms around her in a full embrace, one hand moving to her lower back and the other tangling its fingers in her hair as he not so much kissed as drank her in.

Touch.

It was precisely what he needed.

The feel of warm skin sliding, caressing, petting, enveloping. Fingers pulling, scraping, griping, bruising. Lips and teeth colliding, sucking, devouring.

He pushed himself backward so they were fully on the bed and rolled them over so he could worship her in turn, drawing keening moans as his hands and mouth moved over her neck, traced her collar bone, found her breasts, teased them, pulled them, sucked at her nipples.

She arched into his offerings, her hands locked onto the cast iron frame of the head board to anchor herself somehow in the face of his attack — surely there would be bruises tomorrow, but these too were gifts. Mementos.

The warm yearning at her core had just nearly become unbearable as his fingers finally found their way into the dripping need between her legs. Curses in two or three different languages burst forth as her hips bucked into his ministrations, his fingers moving inside her with exactly the right pressure and precisely the right speed.

He remembered these things. Filed them away. For reference. For later.

Before she recovered from that high she felt the blunt head of his cock pushing up against her entrance, and she wrapped her legs around his waist in response, urging him to push himself in further. He let out a long moan as he obliged, reveling as her tight heat enveloped him fully, and she echoed him with a cry of her own as he stretched her out, filling her completely. Once fully seated he remained perfectly still, both of them breathing fast and deep, his head hanging forward as he propped himself above her, her own chest glowing with a sheen of perspiration and heaving with exertion.

“More — Loki, I need more.”

He groaned again and started to moved, pumping slowly at first for what seemed like forever and no time at all, and then faster as Natasha’s cursing urged him on, “More. You. Fucking. Goddamned. Bastard. More.” She stuttered out between each thrust.

Leverage.

He glanced above their heads and grabbed onto the top of the headboard for more leverage, and set a punishing pace, as she tightened her grip around his waist and dug her nails in to his back.

“Yes. Like that. Sink your nails into my skin! I want to remember this — make me remember this, Natasha!” Loki growled as the heavy bed rocked dangerously, and the muscled in his arms rippled with his efforts.

Natasha’s curses intensified until she finally howled out an inarticulate cry, and her whole body lifted up with the intensity of the orgasm that crashed over her. Loki followed with a great roar and a CRACK as he went entirely rigid, and then just lingered above her, as if unable to move.

They stayed there, just like that, just breathing, Loki hovering above, Natasha wrapped tight around his waist, fingers still locked onto the meat of his back.

Natasha moved first. Flattening her hands, moving to soothe and caress where she had left deep marks with her nails. He hissed slightly in response, closing his eyes briefly, before looking up at his hands and laughing. She looked up as he gingerly opened up his fists and apologized at the twisted metal.

“I’ll fix it.” And he moved to cast a spell that would re-knit the metalwork into its original scrollwork.

“No,” she said. “Leave it. I want the memento.”

They smiled at one another and twined themselves together to sleep.

And that, too, he would remember. File it away. For no reason. For later. He stocked up. There would be so many laters.


End file.
